As we enter a new economic era, there’s a golden opportunity for companies to shift their perspectives and approach work more innovatively. As the winds of change blow, will your business – as the saying goes – build walls or windmills?
Many organisations embraced new technologies when the pandemic hit, and continue to do so. The latest McKinsey Global Survey revealed that the adoption of business automation technologies has increased across all industries and regions. This year, 70% of the organisations surveyed say they are using automation software – up from 66% in 2020 and 57% in 2018. Their top reasons for automating? To enhance the effectiveness of business processes and improve experiences for customers and employees.
If you’re wondering how this works in practice, let’s take customer or employee onboarding as an example. You could automate various aspects of your routine onboarding process to save hours of time, eliminate paperwork, and minimise back-and-forth emails. This is easily done with digital forms and the automation of workflows and repetitive data tasks. As you can imagine, this would not only speed up the process, but also shrink your HR team’s workload, reduce errors, and provide a clear digital audit trail for regulatory compliance purposes – all while improving both the employee and customer experience.
This is just one example of how process automation can transform the way you work. There are a vast number of automation use cases from the back office through to the front office – in healthcare, life sciences, financial services, retail, energy, manufacturing, food and beverage, technology, education, the public sector and many other industries.
In this article, we explain why so many organisations are embracing automation tools, what intelligent automation is, and how to automate your business successfully.
Why put automation to work in your business?
Businesses embrace automation for a variety of reasons. Here are five key benefits:
Escalate efficiency and productivity
Turn slow manual tasks into fast, organised digital processes. Accelerate performance through standardisation, consistency and increased data accessibility.
Use time more wisely
Give your skilled and talented people more time for the work that matters most. Equip them to add more value in – and derive more satisfaction from – their roles.
Control costs
By speeding up work and reducing human error, automation allows you to identify and overcome cost inefficiencies, remove bottlenecks and increase profitability.
Ensure best practice and compliance
Automation supports standardised, digitised and optimised processes that run the right way, every time. Greater transparency and audit trails improve oversight and control.
Welcome the future of work
When processes are run digitally, you can quickly adjust them to meet new demands or challenges. With data, documents and work tools securely accessible from anywhere, you can also support a hybrid working model that allows you to attract and retain top talent globally.
What is intelligent process automation?
Intelligent process automation, made possible by a combination of tools and technologies, helps to reduce human input in a business process. Ideally, technology handles the process steps that are routine, less interesting, and take up the most time.
The goal is not to replace humans in the workplace. Rather, we view automation as a strategy for giving people more time and space to do the work that delivers the most value. Automating dull work and making workloads more manageable also helps to alleviate boredom and burnout, improving the employee experience.
Many employees recognise these benefits and welcome automation in their organisations. For instance, a 2022 study commissioned by UiPath found that 91% of employees globally believe that automation can “improve their job performance” by saving time (52%), improving productivity (46%), and creating opportunities to focus on more important work (45%).
Which tech capabilities power business automation today?
While harnessing intelligent automation may sound like a monumental step, it really doesn’t have to be. There are a range of simple, practical automation technologies available that you can use alongside the business systems you rely on every day.
You can build a process automation solution that works best for your business, using one – or a combination of – the tools listed below.
Process mapping
Easily document and visualise your processes and identify how these can be optimised using clean and simple digital process mapping tools that everyone in your team can access.
Workflow automation
Digitise your processes, connect your data, and seamlessly orchestrate work between people, robots and systems.
Robotic process automation (RPA)
Create software robots to automate repetitive and mundane tasks in a fraction of the time. Let your people focus on work that is more interesting and rewarding.
Practical AI
Bring AI capabilities, like machine learning or natural language processing, into your process automation solutions with ease. You can, for example, extract meaning from unstructured data (like emails) or build chatbots that give customers and employees convenient, conversational access to real-time knowledge, advice and services.
Mobile apps
Build iOS and Android apps for your customers and team members that work optimally on any device, no matter whether they are online or offline.
Data integration
Revolutionise the way you use data and access insights in your business by connecting all your data sources, so you can manage information centrally, in real-time.
Document automation
Create and collaborate on documents like contracts and invoices with a few clicks, from anywhere, to ensure accuracy and compliance.
How we can help you get started
How can you make the most of the automation opportunities that lie before you? There are so many technology choices out there, that it can be tricky to know which automation software is the best fit for your business and, importantly, your people.
This is where jaam automation can help. Collectively, our team brings together more than 75 years of experience in making technology work for businesses like yours. We understand how work gets done in your organisation and what your goals are, and then collaborate with you to deliver an automation solution that empowers your people and helps you gain greater value from your data and the systems you already have in place.
Find out more or chat to us about what you want to achieve by contacting us below.